Multum In Parvo (SPN fanfic) 1/7
Title:Multum in Parvo
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Multum In Parvo
The smell of cooking burgers and onion rings filled the air around Sam as he waited beside the Impala. Dean had walked across the street into the diner to order food, insisting Sam should relax in the car, listen to the stereo-You know, Sammy, just chill. He grinned at Sam and headed over toward the restaurant. Sam huffed out a sigh of complete frustration.
Dean was in full-on, one hundred percent stealth mode-and he was sure he was getting away with it. Of course that was nothing new, his brother usually thought he was getting away with things when they were serious. If Dean had a cold the world knew it, he whined and moaned and occasionally asked Sam to just put him out of his misery. Usually in pathetic tones accompanied by sniffs and snuffles. On the other hand, hack half his leg off and Dean would calmly hop along with a smile on his face and a “It's just a scratch” attitude reminiscent of the Black Knight. On one memorable occasion Dean had let a wound get so septic that it had very nearly killed him, just because he didn't want Sam to worry.
So Dean in stealth mode was a problem-actually more a series of problems. First, find out what was going on. Second, find out how serious or potentially fatal it was and, finally, what could be done about it.
The fact that they had been a part for a long time didn't help matters. For Sam it didn't really feel like time had passed, except for that odd, terrifying sensation of flames licking at the back of his head promising pain and madness beyond what he was capable of even comprehending. But, really, from the time he fell, until this moment in the Impala, it felt like three weeks. They'd been back together for three weeks since he woke in the panic room at Bobby's.
It had taken him less than an hour to realize Dean was thinner than he had been before. When Sam learned how long he'd been gone, and that Dean had living with Lisa, he'd chocked up some of the weight loss to healthy home cooking, and a thousand other excuses. He would try one on for a few hours then discard it when Dean did something to set another little warning bell off.
Four days after they were back on the road and Sam started noticing how much Dean's eating habits had changed. For a man that had once consumed entire pigs worth of bacon for breakfast, Dean now stuck primarily to coffee with sugar and-Sam still couldn't believe this-low fat milk. His brother ordered what looked like a normal lunch, but Sam noticed more often than not Dean would just destroy his food, smash it, cut it into tiny pieces, eat a small portion and leave the rest. The same went for dinner, if Dean ate at all. More worrying, Dean didn't seem to be indulging in alcohol. At all the stops they'd made, his brother would order a beer and go through the motions, but once Sam realized something was up, he noticed Dean's beer was barely touched.
Sam had tried calling Bobby. The older hunter admitted that he' noticed Dean looked thinner, and hadn't been eating as much but had pointed out that things “hadn't been exactly unstressful lately.” Sam had poked and prodded, but after fifteen minutes of fruitless interrogation, he'd decided that Bobby didn't know what was going on. Dean was in super-stealth mode and hadn't let it slip, not even in front of the older hunter.
At one point, Sam had picked up Dean's phone while is brother was showering and scrolled to Lisa's number, contemplating calling her. He'd stared at it for a long, long time before setting the phone down again. He doubted Lisa would tell him anything, so he would just have to approach the problem as usual.
Luckily, he was a professional when it came to deciphering the Dean stealth code. It might take time, but he would get to the bottom of it. He just hoped he had time. Though, judging from Dean's behavior this was something that had been going on for more than a month or two so imminent danger, like blood poisoning, could be ruled out. Sam guess it was something chronic, that just left him with the “what.”
Sam pulled out his journal and looked at the list he'd made:
Badly healed wound. He'd checked that one off. As far as he could tell there were no new serious scars.
Slow acting poison. Sam was pretty sure that was something Bobby would know about so it was tentatively crossed off.
Supernatural illness. Maybe, that one was still on the list, but again, you'd think Bobby would have noticed. Sam wanted to remember if something had happened, but that touched that fiery place in his head.
Other, human, illness. That was a long list, and rather try and list out everything it could be and cross it off, Sam was just adding things he had eliminated to that list. It wasn't very long yet, and that was worrying.
He stared at the words on the page, he was going about this the wrong way. If this was a case, he wouldn't just start making wild guesses about the entity they were facing, he would amass clues, then start narrowing things down. He turned the page and started a new list.
Lack of appetite
Small meals
Drinks sports drinks or “vitamin” waters instead of soda
One cup of coffee, no more
Low fat milk
Sam thought a little longer, trying to put together everything he'd noticed, but not thought about.
No fried food
No donuts
No salad or raw vegetables Although that would almost be normal, the one burger Dean had he'd had plain.
Eats yogurt
Last two stops at a drugstore were the same chain That could mean prescriptions.
Sam tapped his pencil on the page. Even though he hated the idea of violating the sacrosanct privacy of his brother's bags, he was going to have to see if there were prescriptions he needed to know about. They had an unspoken rule, in a life on the road their bags were untouched, tiny islands of privacy in a life lived in close quarters. There was also the overriding “in times of emergency” rule Dean had put into effect when Sam was about seventeen and John had become desperately ill and the only clue had been the tiny voodoo doll that something had secreted in their father's bags.
Sam was officially declaring this an emergency.
He spotted Dean heading back and quickly tucked the journal away. “Operation De-Stealth Dean” was in action.
It was a long day on the road. Sam tried to engage in the first steps of “Operation DSD” and watch Dean without seeming to watch, something he had perfected over a lifetime. Of course, Dean knew when Sam was being stealthy too, and after several increasingly loud sighs, he finally glanced over at Sam with a look that would melt steel. Sam smiled back, giving his brother his best all puppy-eyed innocence look. Dean sighed again before pushing in one of his mixed tapes and cranking Dio to eardrum piercing levels.
Dean finally pulled into a small hotel at the far end of a medium-sized town. A cold rain had settled in, making travel difficult and Sam could tell the day was wearing more than usual on his brother. He might have only been back a few weeks, but there was a lifetime before that to fall back on, and Dean was “uncomfortable.” In Dean language that translated as “pain that made most people scream.”
Sam decided he might need to step up Operation DSD.
Once they were in the room, Dean grabbed his clothes and toiletries bag and headed into the shower. Sam waited patiently for the sound of the water to start before easing across the room towards his brother's bag. Keeping his eyes fixed on the door, he reached into the bag and fished around, looking for anything that felt like pill bottles. He was just about to give up, guessing that Dean might keep them in the shaving kit, when he hit pay dirt. He pulled it out, opened it and pulled a bottle out, writing the name down, then grabbing another. A sound from the bathroom made him jump, he shoved everything back into Dean's bag and made it across the room before Dean opened the door.
“What's up?” Sam asked, hoping it didn't sound too innocent.
“Forgot to grab the new razors.” Dean walked purposefully to his things and grabbed the small bag of pills.
Sam sighed as his brother disappeared back into the bathroom. He grabbed his laptop and looked at the name of the medicine he'd written down before he was interrupted. Hoping he'd spelled it right, or that it would be close enough for Google he typed it in “Ondansetron.” No, that can't be right. Sam hit the first item on the page, he had to have written it down wrong. “Ondansetron is used to prevent nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery.” Sam scrolled down the page, but they all had about the same information and even after trying several “misspellings” of the word, it was the only one that came close. He wished he'd had more time to get the names of the other meds, and there had been... Sam paused... Five or six bottles.
He pulled out his journal and added Meds, more than one.
“Find anything?” Dean asked, coming out of the bathroom.
“What?” Sam asked guiltily, quickly closing the browser window.
“The case?”
“No.”
Dean grinned at him. “Surfing porn finally?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. Sam huffed and Dean laughed. “Yep, porn.” He flopped on the other bed and grabbed the remote, turning on the TV and flipping through the channels. “Don't let me disturb you.”
“The wireless here sucks.”
“Good cover, so you weren't surfing porn, you were just trying to get a signal to surf porn?”
“When was the last time I surfed...” Sam stopped himself. Maybe that other Sam had. He knew his brother forgave him, but he wasn't so sure Dean would ever be able to forgive that other Sam. There was really no way he could explain it, he'd even tried, but he knew his brother thought of them-him-as two different people. Sometimes, late at night, that haunted Sam, knowing the other him had been so horrible that Dean had to compartmentalize them. He took a deep breath, shaking off the mood. “I was trying to find something about that weird supercell they spotted just south of here a few hours ago.”
“Wrong part of the country, wrong time of the year,” Dean agreed, glancing over, one hand absently rubbing his stomach.
“You okay?”
“What did you find out?” Dean asked, ignoring him.
“Find out?”
“Supercell?”
“Oh, not much, not yet. They don't have much up on the web yet.” Sam frowned at the laptop like it was to blame for the lack of information. “I was trying to get into... Are you sure you're alright?”
“I'm fine,” Dean growled.
The tone was enough to make Sam set the computer aside. “Dean?” He took a good look at his brother, Dean was gray, the tight lines at the edge of his mouth that signified serious pain marking his face. “What's wrong?”
“I'm...”
“No,” Sam growled back. He was tired of the dance, tired of the game Operation DSD was about to go into attack mode. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing,” Dean wheezed out, getting, if possible, even more pale.
“Right.”
“Really, it's...” His brother stopped and went sheet-white before clutching at his chest. “Sonofabitch!”
“Dean!” Sam was beside him a second later. “What is it?”
“Chest,” Dean managed to get out. “Hurts.”
“I'm calling...”
“Don't you dare,” Dean grunted.
“Then you go.” Sam didn't wait for Dean to agree or not. One thing the other Sam had done was stay in shape. Sam easily picked up his brother and headed for the car. The fact Dean didn't protest when Sam dumped him into the passenger seat set off all of Sam's “Dean” alarms at once. He ran around to the driver's side and climbed in. “We're going to the ER.”
“I know.”
Sam panicked, threw the car into gear and floored it.
Chapter Two
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Multum In Parvo
The smell of cooking burgers and onion rings filled the air around Sam as he waited beside the Impala. Dean had walked across the street into the diner to order food, insisting Sam should relax in the car, listen to the stereo-You know, Sammy, just chill. He grinned at Sam and headed over toward the restaurant. Sam huffed out a sigh of complete frustration.
Dean was in full-on, one hundred percent stealth mode-and he was sure he was getting away with it. Of course that was nothing new, his brother usually thought he was getting away with things when they were serious. If Dean had a cold the world knew it, he whined and moaned and occasionally asked Sam to just put him out of his misery. Usually in pathetic tones accompanied by sniffs and snuffles. On the other hand, hack half his leg off and Dean would calmly hop along with a smile on his face and a “It's just a scratch” attitude reminiscent of the Black Knight. On one memorable occasion Dean had let a wound get so septic that it had very nearly killed him, just because he didn't want Sam to worry.
So Dean in stealth mode was a problem-actually more a series of problems. First, find out what was going on. Second, find out how serious or potentially fatal it was and, finally, what could be done about it.
The fact that they had been a part for a long time didn't help matters. For Sam it didn't really feel like time had passed, except for that odd, terrifying sensation of flames licking at the back of his head promising pain and madness beyond what he was capable of even comprehending. But, really, from the time he fell, until this moment in the Impala, it felt like three weeks. They'd been back together for three weeks since he woke in the panic room at Bobby's.
It had taken him less than an hour to realize Dean was thinner than he had been before. When Sam learned how long he'd been gone, and that Dean had living with Lisa, he'd chocked up some of the weight loss to healthy home cooking, and a thousand other excuses. He would try one on for a few hours then discard it when Dean did something to set another little warning bell off.
Four days after they were back on the road and Sam started noticing how much Dean's eating habits had changed. For a man that had once consumed entire pigs worth of bacon for breakfast, Dean now stuck primarily to coffee with sugar and-Sam still couldn't believe this-low fat milk. His brother ordered what looked like a normal lunch, but Sam noticed more often than not Dean would just destroy his food, smash it, cut it into tiny pieces, eat a small portion and leave the rest. The same went for dinner, if Dean ate at all. More worrying, Dean didn't seem to be indulging in alcohol. At all the stops they'd made, his brother would order a beer and go through the motions, but once Sam realized something was up, he noticed Dean's beer was barely touched.
Sam had tried calling Bobby. The older hunter admitted that he' noticed Dean looked thinner, and hadn't been eating as much but had pointed out that things “hadn't been exactly unstressful lately.” Sam had poked and prodded, but after fifteen minutes of fruitless interrogation, he'd decided that Bobby didn't know what was going on. Dean was in super-stealth mode and hadn't let it slip, not even in front of the older hunter.
At one point, Sam had picked up Dean's phone while is brother was showering and scrolled to Lisa's number, contemplating calling her. He'd stared at it for a long, long time before setting the phone down again. He doubted Lisa would tell him anything, so he would just have to approach the problem as usual.
Luckily, he was a professional when it came to deciphering the Dean stealth code. It might take time, but he would get to the bottom of it. He just hoped he had time. Though, judging from Dean's behavior this was something that had been going on for more than a month or two so imminent danger, like blood poisoning, could be ruled out. Sam guess it was something chronic, that just left him with the “what.”
Sam pulled out his journal and looked at the list he'd made:
Badly healed wound. He'd checked that one off. As far as he could tell there were no new serious scars.
Slow acting poison. Sam was pretty sure that was something Bobby would know about so it was tentatively crossed off.
Supernatural illness. Maybe, that one was still on the list, but again, you'd think Bobby would have noticed. Sam wanted to remember if something had happened, but that touched that fiery place in his head.
Other, human, illness. That was a long list, and rather try and list out everything it could be and cross it off, Sam was just adding things he had eliminated to that list. It wasn't very long yet, and that was worrying.
He stared at the words on the page, he was going about this the wrong way. If this was a case, he wouldn't just start making wild guesses about the entity they were facing, he would amass clues, then start narrowing things down. He turned the page and started a new list.
Lack of appetite
Small meals
Drinks sports drinks or “vitamin” waters instead of soda
One cup of coffee, no more
Low fat milk
Sam thought a little longer, trying to put together everything he'd noticed, but not thought about.
No fried food
No donuts
No salad or raw vegetables Although that would almost be normal, the one burger Dean had he'd had plain.
Eats yogurt
Last two stops at a drugstore were the same chain That could mean prescriptions.
Sam tapped his pencil on the page. Even though he hated the idea of violating the sacrosanct privacy of his brother's bags, he was going to have to see if there were prescriptions he needed to know about. They had an unspoken rule, in a life on the road their bags were untouched, tiny islands of privacy in a life lived in close quarters. There was also the overriding “in times of emergency” rule Dean had put into effect when Sam was about seventeen and John had become desperately ill and the only clue had been the tiny voodoo doll that something had secreted in their father's bags.
Sam was officially declaring this an emergency.
He spotted Dean heading back and quickly tucked the journal away. “Operation De-Stealth Dean” was in action.
It was a long day on the road. Sam tried to engage in the first steps of “Operation DSD” and watch Dean without seeming to watch, something he had perfected over a lifetime. Of course, Dean knew when Sam was being stealthy too, and after several increasingly loud sighs, he finally glanced over at Sam with a look that would melt steel. Sam smiled back, giving his brother his best all puppy-eyed innocence look. Dean sighed again before pushing in one of his mixed tapes and cranking Dio to eardrum piercing levels.
Dean finally pulled into a small hotel at the far end of a medium-sized town. A cold rain had settled in, making travel difficult and Sam could tell the day was wearing more than usual on his brother. He might have only been back a few weeks, but there was a lifetime before that to fall back on, and Dean was “uncomfortable.” In Dean language that translated as “pain that made most people scream.”
Sam decided he might need to step up Operation DSD.
Once they were in the room, Dean grabbed his clothes and toiletries bag and headed into the shower. Sam waited patiently for the sound of the water to start before easing across the room towards his brother's bag. Keeping his eyes fixed on the door, he reached into the bag and fished around, looking for anything that felt like pill bottles. He was just about to give up, guessing that Dean might keep them in the shaving kit, when he hit pay dirt. He pulled it out, opened it and pulled a bottle out, writing the name down, then grabbing another. A sound from the bathroom made him jump, he shoved everything back into Dean's bag and made it across the room before Dean opened the door.
“What's up?” Sam asked, hoping it didn't sound too innocent.
“Forgot to grab the new razors.” Dean walked purposefully to his things and grabbed the small bag of pills.
Sam sighed as his brother disappeared back into the bathroom. He grabbed his laptop and looked at the name of the medicine he'd written down before he was interrupted. Hoping he'd spelled it right, or that it would be close enough for Google he typed it in “Ondansetron.” No, that can't be right. Sam hit the first item on the page, he had to have written it down wrong. “Ondansetron is used to prevent nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery.” Sam scrolled down the page, but they all had about the same information and even after trying several “misspellings” of the word, it was the only one that came close. He wished he'd had more time to get the names of the other meds, and there had been... Sam paused... Five or six bottles.
He pulled out his journal and added Meds, more than one.
“Find anything?” Dean asked, coming out of the bathroom.
“What?” Sam asked guiltily, quickly closing the browser window.
“The case?”
“No.”
Dean grinned at him. “Surfing porn finally?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. Sam huffed and Dean laughed. “Yep, porn.” He flopped on the other bed and grabbed the remote, turning on the TV and flipping through the channels. “Don't let me disturb you.”
“The wireless here sucks.”
“Good cover, so you weren't surfing porn, you were just trying to get a signal to surf porn?”
“When was the last time I surfed...” Sam stopped himself. Maybe that other Sam had. He knew his brother forgave him, but he wasn't so sure Dean would ever be able to forgive that other Sam. There was really no way he could explain it, he'd even tried, but he knew his brother thought of them-him-as two different people. Sometimes, late at night, that haunted Sam, knowing the other him had been so horrible that Dean had to compartmentalize them. He took a deep breath, shaking off the mood. “I was trying to find something about that weird supercell they spotted just south of here a few hours ago.”
“Wrong part of the country, wrong time of the year,” Dean agreed, glancing over, one hand absently rubbing his stomach.
“You okay?”
“What did you find out?” Dean asked, ignoring him.
“Find out?”
“Supercell?”
“Oh, not much, not yet. They don't have much up on the web yet.” Sam frowned at the laptop like it was to blame for the lack of information. “I was trying to get into... Are you sure you're alright?”
“I'm fine,” Dean growled.
The tone was enough to make Sam set the computer aside. “Dean?” He took a good look at his brother, Dean was gray, the tight lines at the edge of his mouth that signified serious pain marking his face. “What's wrong?”
“I'm...”
“No,” Sam growled back. He was tired of the dance, tired of the game Operation DSD was about to go into attack mode. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing,” Dean wheezed out, getting, if possible, even more pale.
“Right.”
“Really, it's...” His brother stopped and went sheet-white before clutching at his chest. “Sonofabitch!”
“Dean!” Sam was beside him a second later. “What is it?”
“Chest,” Dean managed to get out. “Hurts.”
“I'm calling...”
“Don't you dare,” Dean grunted.
“Then you go.” Sam didn't wait for Dean to agree or not. One thing the other Sam had done was stay in shape. Sam easily picked up his brother and headed for the car. The fact Dean didn't protest when Sam dumped him into the passenger seat set off all of Sam's “Dean” alarms at once. He ran around to the driver's side and climbed in. “We're going to the ER.”
“I know.”
Sam panicked, threw the car into gear and floored it.
Chapter Two